In the musical Hamilton, one of the big final numbers has the line "who lives, who dies, who tells your story..." I love that song. It makes me think, about Alexander Hamilton and about myself and the people I have known who have lived and died and had their story told. One of those people who died is my dad who died before I was 30. He was only 62, which seems so young to me now that I approach 65.
My dad was an oldest child. The son of farmers, pioneers, immigrants, and founders of our country. He had an education and was a veteran of WWII. It seemed to me he could do everything and anything. He drove taxis and built houses, farmed and ran a local newspaper. He lectored at church and belonged to civic organizations. He was a teacher and then principal and then school superintendent. He was strong and friendly, He was a good daddy, to me.
I was talking to my sister about him the other day. She was the youngest, born the fourth child in 5 years. She was Mom's favorite. She doesn't remember Dad the same way that I do. I remember running out to meet Daddy's car when he drove into the driveway after work when we lived in Thomson before she was born. I remember going fishing with him in a little boat on the Mississippi River. Feeding the calves he raised, clearing brush, and just being around to go places with him. I was Daddy's girl since long before I started school.
Then we moved to Rockford and that sister of mine was born, after 2 brothers. I was off to kindergarten and beyond by the time my sister arrived. Dad taught school and did jobs in the summer to supplement the family income. He was a taxi driver, a painter, and handyman in the summer. By the time my sister was school age, our mom went back to work, and looking back at it all, I am sure that everyone in the family was busy. I can remember a few times in my sister's early childhood when my dad tried to hold her and play with her and she screamed for Mom. She never became a daddy's girl. I think it was nobody's fault, everybody was just busy and she was mommy's girl.
I remember that Dad felt responsibility to my brothers and was involved in Cub Scouts and such with them. He followed the prescription of his era that the mother should train the girls and the father, the boys. My brothers didn't like doing things with Dad all that much, it seemed to me, and my sister not at all, so by the time I was a teenager, I usually chose to do things with Dad. A lot of those things involved driving somewhere or being out of the house. Dad and I had a lot of long talks and I learned about the things he believed and felt. Looking back, I am sure that fueled the jealousy my mother had for me and the mean treatment I sometimes received at her hands. Mom and I were oil and water and except that we choose to get along these past many years, we still are that, opposites.
Soon after I was married and had my son and lived across the world, my dad died. It was a shock, cancer, out of nowhere. The other kids seemed to be barely adults when that tragedy happened and I wasn't yet 30 years old. Dad is frozen in time for us, each of us with our own memories and opinions. If each of us told the story of Dad we would say different things, have known a different man. To me he was wise and wonderful, my protector, and my friend. My sister remembers a dad who wasn't there a lot, an absent father. I realize that for her, he wasn't there a lot. He had a demanding job and belonged to several civic organizations and then single handed-ly ran the local weekly newspaper and built two houses and farmed a small hobby farm. He was busy. My sister didn't have many of those long talks with Dad that I had. She had not developed the easy pattern of getting in the vehicle and going where ever he was going or helping with whatever task he was doing that day. She didn't know him the way I did....so I tell her. We grew up in the same household, only 5 years apart in age, but we didn't have the same parents, the same experiences. Our points of view are different. It makes me think, "who lives, who dies, who tells your story...."
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